Stories about: Asera

Vendors from both the integration world and the application development world are tackling the collaborative applications challenge, building new middleware layers they hope will become platforms for the development of these next-generation enterprise applications. Their efforts will ultimately move the enterprise beyond point-to-point integration using proprietary APIs and toward a standards-based, loosely coupled, business-rules-driven software layer that enables enterprises to stitch together existing systems components into collaborative applications.

Asera on Monday plans to announce Version 5.0 of its eBusiness Operating System, featuring Web services, workflow, and ties to legacy applications.

Officials of startup Asera held a gala event here Monday night to officially debut the company's eBusiness Operating System, which is being positioned as a platform for uniting back-end applications for use in Internet commerce front ends.

Electronic Data Systems Corp.'s acquisition of Structural Dynamics Research Corp. (SDRC) underscored last week the need for large enterprises to integrate product development with their supply chains. SDRC drove the message home by announcing partnerships with i2 Technologies Inc. and Asera Inc., as well as a suite of collaboration offerings.

One week after resigning as president and CEO of IBM Corp.'s Tivoli Systems Inc. division, David Murphy has taken a job as president and CEO of Asera Inc., a 2-year-old e-business software startup focused on fast growth.

Startups come and go--like mom-and-pop coffee shops on fading downtown streets or oriental-rug outlets in tacky strip malls. They open with big banners and high hopes. Most don't last. But still they keep coming, with earnest, optimistic proprietors trumpeting their business plans to bargain-hungry investors and speculators. The trick is to know which business models have a good chance at success and which are likely to lead to dead ends.

Venture capitalists still have plenty of money to invest in new technology companies, but they're getting a whole lot pickier about what sort of ventures they'll invest in and what they expect in return. Even with the recent stock market gyrations, venture capitalists are on the lookout for new investment opportunities. Some investors, however, are reserving their capital for jackpot ventures that might become the next Cisco Systems Inc. or Amazon.com Inc., promising the highest potential returns in the least amount of time.

Chalk it up as a year for the record books. Venture capital investments in network companies topped $11 billion in the fourth quarter of 1999, shattering all previous records and pushing the year-end total to $23.1 billion - more than quadruple the investments made in 1998.

Losing customers daily, his boss threatening to fire him, Jason Monberg gambled his company's future on Enterprise JavaBeans (EJBs)-a new Java technology. It was the act of a desperate man.